The Fire Sale

Apparently, it’s not sufficient to pay people $7,500 to “buy” an electric car – using your money (as a taxpayer) to facilitate the transaction. Democrats want to increase the amount that taxpayers are forced to subsidize each purchase of an American-made electric car to $12,500.

This will “benefit” America, you see. Or rather, some Americans – at the expense of other Americans. Including Americans who pay full freight for their non-electric Toyota or Honda Japanese (or German) car and then pay more taxes to make up for the tax kickback used to “help” their neighbor buy his American-brand electric car.

That’s how you “build back better,” apparently.

To put what’s on offer in some perspective:   

$12,500 amounts to a near 40 percent “discount” off the MSRP – the sticker price – of an electric car such as the Chevy Bolt,  some 60,000 of which were recently recalled due to their tendency to auto-immolate, which is a function of their being electric cars. Which are all fire-prone because of the nature of the things – because of the inherent susceptibility of the thousands of individual cells in a single EV battery pack to damage in accident or deterioration over time or on account of a manufacturing defect.

All it takes being one damaged/defective/deteriorated cell to trigger thermal runaway – a short circuit – and a searing chemical fire that is faster spreading than a gas fire, hotter than a gas fire and – unlike a gas fire – is capable of spontaneous re-ignition after it has been put out.

Sometimes, several times.

It is why some wrecking yards have giant sarcophagi to douse and house crisped EVs in, so as to assure they do not catch fire again – and crisp the entire lot.

Electric cars are also inherently fire-prone due to the stress on the battery pack of deep discharging followed by “fast” recharging. If the charging circuitry doesn’t keep things balanced just so, if a cell within the pack is dendritically challenged, if the cooling system doesn’t work – it’s hot zig, you’re all fired up.

Or maybe just your house.

Now salt the wound with half or less the range of almost any non-electric car and rub in having to wait at least five times as long as any non-electric car takes to fully refuel to partially recharge  (the latter in order to reduce the inherent fire risk a bit).

Is it any wonder they have to bribe people to “buy” such cars?

As with the “vaccines,” too many people are – apparently – hesitant about EVs.

Actually, they want nothing to do with either, for similarly intelligent reasons. The risks outweigh the benefits. What does the buyer get for his money if he spends it on an EV? Leaving aside the subjectives – EVs are “neat” and “technologically advanced” – the objectives are that EVs cost too much time and too much money. They are less convenient and they are fundamentally (inherently) dangerous.

For some people, the flaws may be worth overlooking – and the risks worth taking. As with Joe Biden. The same as with the Jabs.

But most people only have so much money and want to get where they need to go, now – not hours from now. Or even 30 minutes from now. They reasonably shy away from getting in a car they may never get out of, alive.

Or which might burn them out of house and home.

In any other context, a vehicle that had to be discounted to the tune of 40 percent off would be considered a disaster – and no more would be made. The ones that had been made would be gotten rid of as quickly and quietly as possible. The loss would be chalked up to bad design, defective design, poor marketing or marketing mismatch. Back to the drawing board – to figure out what went wrong and why. And – most of all – steps would be taken to assure it did not happen again.

But electric cars? Let’s “discount” them even more! That’s the ticket! Maybe once they’re “free,” demand for them will really pick up.

“We want to incentivize this. It puts American manufacturers in the lead, which is where we want them, and it reduces emissions faster than any other policy that we could put in place,” Representative Dan Kildee, Michigan Democrat, told Reuters.

Actually, it does no such thing. Well, it may “incentivize” the distribution of these American-made electric loss leaders.

It’s easier to get rid of inventory when it is no  longer necessary to convince people to pay what it costs to produce it. How fast would the meat rack at the supermarket be cleared of ribeyes if they were marked down 40 percent? What an idea! It would “incentivize” people to buy more ribeyes!

Of course, the problem then becomes how to get the ranchers to produce the ribeyes – and the supermarket to stock them – and eat the loss. The incentive then becomes – to not produce them.  

Unless, of course, you can get government to make up the 40 percent markdown. Regardless someone pays. Just not the someone getting the “incentive.” It’s a nice trick, if you don’t mind others being made to pay your bills.

You might even call it a fire sale.

And “reduce emissions”? That’s a fatuity in need of multi-tiered deconstruction. 

First, definitions – corrected.

Emissions until recently referred to the combustion byproducts that affected air quality; i.e., which caused or contributed to the formation of smog and exacerbated asthma and so on in people. Then an oily redefinition of emissions was proffered that expanded the definition to include carbon dioxide, which has nothing whatsoever to do do with smog or making people’s asthma worse.

This was a propaganda move, intended to make people equate C02 with the things that once upon a time did cause smog and worsened asthma – but which have been reduced to such a degree that if they still do, they hardly do.

And in any event, C02 does not. – at all.

It is asserted that carbon dioxide resulting from combustion of gasoline in non-electric car engines is causing “climate change.” If so – and how much – can be debated, based on facts. But it is deliberately misleading to conflate the emissions that create or worsen smog and breathing difficulties – as emissions have been defined for decades – and the entirely different “emissions” of carbon dioxide.

Second, it is doubtful whether government-mandated electric cars “emit” less carbon dioxide, on the whole.

They emit none at the tailpipe, of course – since EVs haven’t got one. But it is – once again – oilily misleading to not factor into the calculation the totality of carbon dioxide emitted in the course of the manufacture of EVs and their 1,000-plus pounds of battery pack and the carbon dioxide emitted by the sources of electrical generation that power these battery packs, most of which are not “carbon neutral.”

Finally, EVs are energy hogs.

It takes the just-mentioned 1,000-plus pounds of battery pack to give them about half the highway-range capability of almost any non-electric car and it takes 400-800 volts of electricity to charge them up in anything less than several hours. The wastage here is staggering, if unreported.

But even so, people know a bad deal when they see it. Which is why it’s necessary to pay them off in order to get them to see it differently.

. . .

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